With a little sobbing oath Andy ran in. Bonbright could have heaved the man he held over his shoulder in that terrific fall well known to deadly wrestling. Wade's stern, "Sst! Git back there!" stopped the boy. Even as Creed's muscles knotted themselves to the supreme effort came sudden memory of what he must stand for to these people. It was his right to defend his own life; he must not, in any extremity, take that of another. His grip relaxed. Turrentine partially got his feet again; his arms were free; the right made a swift movement, and Creed caught the gleam of a knife-blade. Without volition of his own he flung all his weight and strength into one mighty movement that hurled man and weapon from him. Plunging, staggering, clutching at the air, Turrentine gave ground. The moonlight flickered on the blade in his upflung hand as, with a strangled hoarse cry he reeled backward over the bluff. There was a rending sound of breaking branches, a noise of rolling rocks; then deadly silence. For a long moment the men left standing on the cliff strained eyes and ears to where Blatch had gone down, then, "Keep off!" shouted Creed as the three others began silently to close in on him. "Stand back, boys. We've had enough of this. Draw off and let me get down and see what's happened to him." He kept slowly backing away, striving not to be hemmed in against the rock behind him. The others warily followed. "Let you down and finish him, ye mean--don't ye?" screamed Andy with all a boy's senseless rage. "You're a fine one to bring law and order into the Turkey Tracks," Wade taunted savagely. "You've brought murder--that's what you've done." "He drew a knife on me," cried Bonbright. "You all saw that. I only shoved him away. I never meant to throw him over the bluff." "Nobody seen no knife but you, Creed Bonbright," Jeff doggedly asseverated. "All three of us seen you fling Blatch over the bluff. You ain't in no court of law now. Yo' lies won't do you no good. Yo' where we kill the feller that done the killin'." "How?" said Creed, still backing, feeling his way slowly, seeking for some break in the rise behind, the others coming a little closer. "By jumpin' on to him somewhere out at night, four to one--or even three to one?" "Yes, by God! thataway, ef we cain't do it no better way," panted Wade. Years before--heaven knows how many--a little seep of water began to gather between two huge stones in the small broken bluff behind Creed. Winter after winter the crevice through which the trickle came enlarged, the water caught in a natural basin and froze with all its puny might to heave the stones apart. The winter before this slow process had closed leaving a wedge of rock trembling upon its base, ready to fall into a crevice. Yet the opening was masked with vine leaves, and when the spring rains finally washed away the mould and the crude doorway tottered and sank, the gap thus left was unnoted, invisible to the sharpest eye.